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Vice President Lukashenko (or "Back in the USSR")
It's Pavel Felgenhauer again, citing an unnamed "high Kremlin source." I hope he's wrong here. During an apparently hum-drum meeting last week, Putin & Looneyshenko supposedly had some more interesting and far-reaching behind-the-scenes discussions about their oft-stated intent to unite their countries. EFL.Putin and Lukashenko apparently agreed on a joint strategy to prevent popular democratic revolutions from overthrowing their regimes. The Kremlin insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me that a tentative agreement has been reached that would drastically speed up the process of merging Russia and Belarus into a bastion opposing Western-sponsored democratic change. In a year or so, a referendum will be held in Russia and Belarus to merge the two nations. The Russian Constitution will be rewritten, and the State Duma will be disbanded to create a new joint parliament. The countries' defense and foreign ministries will be merged. ... Lukashenko will run with Putin as vice president, assured that the Kremlin will be his after Putin's seven-year term ends. ... [F]ear of regime change is driving the two leaders together, though they do not particularly like each other. The ruling elite is split today, and not in Putin's favor. Over the last year, discontent has spread rapidly, engulfing previously loyal parts of the bureaucracy. It's not well known to the general public, but no secret to insiders: The middle ranks of the military, security services and law enforcement are today disgusted with Kremlin policies and no longer support Putin's regime. Kremlin insiders feel their growing isolation. If the men with guns are increasingly disloyal, any serious crisis may, as in Kyrgyzstan or in Georgia, lead to sudden regime collapse. There will be no one willing to fight for Putin if some future stupid reform brings the masses onto the streets. Enter Lukashenko, who built a loyal military in Belarus that is ready to batter dissenters anytime. During serious internal crises, Putin has tended in previous years to keep a low profile, but in the future, Vice President Lukashenko could step in, airlift his rogues from Minsk to Moscow and save the regime. This marriage of convenience may help Putin stay in power, while ending Lukashenko's present international isolation. Ironically, for Russian nationalists, writing off Central Asia and the Caucasus opens the door to a more secure ideological foundation of pan-Slavicism, leaving a west-leaning Ukraine as the only particularly bitter pill to swallow (though the Russian-majority areas of northern Kazakhstan are sadly missed as well). A proposed name for this neo-Soviet state is the Union of Sovereign Slavic Republics, which preserves the old acronym both in English and (I'm told -- can any Russophones confirm or deny?) in Russian. Regardless of this particular article's validity, there is definitely trouble in Moscow's future. Gadzooks, what if we actually come to miss Putin? Now that's scary. Posted by: Rex Rufus 2005-04-12 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=61301 |